htly of the dead," said the young girl in a tone of
displeasure and looking directly at him.

Putnam felt badly snubbed. He was about to attempt an explanation, but
her manner indicated that she considered the conversation at an end. She
gathered up her skirts and prepared to leave the summer-house. The water
had soaked away somewhat into the gravel.

"Excuse me," said Putnam, advancing desperately and touching his hat,
"but I notice that your shoes are thin and the ground is still very wet.
I'm going right over to High street, and if I can send you a carriage or
anything--"

"Thank you, no: I sha'n't need it;" and she stepped off hastily down the
walk.

Putnam looked after her till a winding of the path took her out of
sight, and then started slowly homeward. "What the deuce could she
mean," he pondered as he walked along, "about spending the night in the
cemetery? Can she--no she can't--be the gatekeeper's daughter and live
in the gate-house? Anyway, she's mighty pretty."

His mother and his maiden aunt, who with himself made up the entire
household, received him with small scoldings and twitterings of anxiety.
They felt his wet clothes, prophesied a return of his fever and forced
him to go immediately to bed, where they administered hot drinks and
toast soaked in scalded milk. He lay awake a long time, somewhat
fatigued and excited. In his feeble condition and in the monotony which
his life had assumed of late the trifling experience of the afternoon
took on the full proportions of an adventure. He thought it over again
and again, but finally fell asleep and slept soundly. He awoke once,
just at dawn, and lay looking through his window at a rosy cloud which
reposed upon an infinite depth of sky, motionless as if sculptured
against the blue. A light morning wind stirred the curtains and the
scent of mignonette floated in from the dewy garden. He had that
confused sense of anticipation so common in moments between waking and
sleeping, when some new, pleasant thing has happened, or is to happen on
the morrow, which the memory is too drowsy to present distinctly. Of
this pleasant, indistinct promise that auroral cloud seemed somehow the
omen or symbol, and watching it he fell asleep again. When he next awoke
the sunlight of mid-forenoon was flooding the chamber, and he heard his
mother's voice below stairs as she sat at her sewing.

In the afternoon he started on his customary walk, and his feet led him
involuntar